The Outskirter's Secret

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Rowan pulled Bel aside as they were entering Kree’s tent for the night. “What is it?” Bel asked.

  Rowan waited a moment, permitting the members of the war band to finish entering, before she spoke. “I have a question.”

  Bel glanced once at the disappearing warriors. “Yes?” They stepped farther from the entrance.

  “If you’re on walkabout and your partner gets in trouble, it’s your duty to rescue him, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  Stars were appearing above. The breeze whispered. “If you fail, are you held responsible for his death?”

  Bel raised her brows, an action barely visible in the gloom. “It happens fairly often. If people suspect you failed through incompetence, yes. You might face a blood duel when you return. Or if you refuse to help through cowardice, then that’s the same as murder, and you can be executed. But those things are hard to prove; it’s just the two of you, out there alone. Usually, no one’s held to blame.” Bel shifted uncomfortably, and Rowan suspected that she would not like what she heard next. “Remember, the candidates are children.”

  “Children?”

  “Around thirteen years of age is usual. Some go earlier, some later.”

  Rowan found the idea appalling. “But Fletcher went last year, and he wasn’t a child.”

  “No, he was.” Bel shook her head broadly. “It’s a passage: if you’re an Outskirter, then you’re a child until you go walkabout, and a warrior after. Formally, as far as the tribe was concerned, Fletcher was a child.”

  “And his partner was some thirteen years old.”

  “Yes. It’s sad.”

  Rowan was thinking of Fletcher’s expression when, against his will, his thoughts were forced to dwell upon his journey. And she remembered another face that carried a look that was as quiet, as dark, as deep. “Is Jaffry the only child Jann has?”

  Bel looked up at her with interest. “I don’t know.”

  In the morning, Rowan was again the last in Kree’s tent to rise. As she stepped into the cool sunlight, something crackled under her foot. She looked, and then stooped down to examine it.

  It was a statue, some eight inches tall, cleverly constructed of split and woven redgrass reeds and blades, depicting a goat rearing on its hind legs. The artist had used the variations in grass color to good effect, creating the shadows of musculature, suggesting the sweep and swirl of long hair in the wind, outlining wild eyes.

  But it had been destroyed: torn, crushed, ground into the dirt. Rowan looked about for someone to question, then hesitated. The condition of the statue was ominous, suggesting a malicious ritual. If this was the case, she suspected that any question asked of a casual passerby might be refused. She had been careful to avoid testing the Outskirters’ acceptance of her steerswoman’s privilege. Should she now be required to place one or another tribe member under her ban, the tribe as a whole would be less comfortable with her presence among them.

  Rowan rankled at the necessity of limiting her natural scope of questions; but she needed to travel among these Outskirters. Until she was certain of the tribe’s indulgence, she must bend to any suspected requirements.

  Bel, Rowan decided, was the safest source of either explanation or explication of limits to investigation. Rowan decided that the next time she could find a quiet moment alone with her companion, she would ask, at the very least, whether asking was permitted.

  23

  It was a long time before any such quiet moment was found; the following morning, the tribe moved again.

  In the space of an hour, the cloth-and-leather city vanished. Tents became trains, possessions became packs. Excited children and complaining goats were ushered into flocks. The unseen outer circle of defenders drew invisibly closer. Scouts scattered beyond, and the inner circle was doubled, its nearer members close enough to hail with a shout.

  There were no shouts. Wide-armed signals were passed back and forth, inward and out. Rowan wanted to ask their meaning, but restrained herself, and set to the task of deciphering them by context.

  Kammeryn’s arm swept an arc in the air, crossed it, then arrowed to the horizon. The signal echoed its way through the herders, to the inner circle, to the outer, to the distant scouts: a visible, silent reverberation. The tribe moved: walkers, train-draggers, herders, and goats, all tracking across the barren land toward new pastures to the east.

  Rowan and Bel traveled among a contingent of pack-carrying warriors: Orranyn’s band, which included Jann, Jaffry, Merryk, and Garvin. Bel was instantly at ease, trudging along companionably, chatting to Merryk about the usefulness of his assorted weaponry.

  Rowan, by contrast, felt very peculiar indeed. She was accustomed to solitude; but here were no less than one hundred and fifty people moving together through the wilderness.

  Kammeryn led: a tall and dignified old man, striding at an easy pace, his aide two steps behind him. Flung far to the seyoh’s left and right were two persons assigned to the signal relay, one a mertutial, the other a warrior—the job was appropriate for either category. Behind Kammeryn were warriors with heavy packs, followed by warriors and mertutials dragging train.

  Rowan and Bel traveled behind this group, within a second contingent of pack-carrying warriors. Behind them walked persons carrying much lighter packs, including two war bands, whose chiefs occasionally checked over their shoulders for signals from the rear relay, posted alone far behind.

  The morning was clear and windy, cold air cutting down from the sky, so that the surrounding walkers provided no shield for persons traveling in the heart of the tribe. Rowan bundled herself into her cloak, listening with curiosity to the conversations around her: family discussions, wry observations, and a few flirtatious comments tossed back and forth from various positions within the tribe. This was no army, Rowan told herself; despite its defensive configuration, it remained in motion, as it had been in stillness, a community.

  At noon, Chess and her assistants distributed meat and bread, and the tribe ate as it walked. Children began to tire, and some of the smallest were loaded onto trains, there to doze, oblivious. After the meal, conversation lagged, and Jann, Garvin, and Orranyn began to amuse themselves by singing as they walked.

  When the tribe stopped for the night, arrangements were casual. The evening was fair, though chilly, and only three tents were erected: the seyoh’s, the healer’s, which also served as a dormitory for the least hardy elders, and a group tent for the fourteen children. Some children, Hari among them, complained at being consigned to the tent, and two of them, Hari and a gangly girl near walkabout age, were permitted to remain with the adults.

  To Rowan’s surprise, Hari did not choose to sleep with his mother’s war band. He arranged his bedroll among Orranyn’s people, next to Garvin, who accepted the boy’s presence without complaint.

  “Garvin is his mentor,” Kree replied to Rowan’s question.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Bel put in as she approached, carrying two bowls of food, “that Garvin is the person in charge of Hari’s education. Every child gets a mentor, at about Hari’s age.” She handed one bowl to Rowan and settled down beside her.

  Rowan looked at the contents: a thin slice of goat meat, tightly rolled and crusted with an unidentifiable substance, arranged on top of toasted cubes of what proved to be crunchy bread. All were cold. “No hot food?”

  “Not tonight.”

  Fletcher arrived, with his dinner and Kree’s. He sat down with such a wild splaying of joints that Rowan expected nearby persons to be scattered like twigs. Miraculously, he avoided bumping anyone; the effect was incongruously graceful, after the fact.

  Rowan continued to Kree: “You’re not teaching Hari yourself?” She noticed Fletcher watching her closely.

  “No,” Kree replied. “Mothers don’t mentor their children. We tend to be biased. It’s easy to become slack.”

  “My mother was my mentor,” Bel said, taking a bite of meat.
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  “Well, that’s rare.”

  Rowan crunched some of the bread cubes. They had a sweet, smoky flavor. “Who decides who is whose mentor?” She tried the meat.

  She did not hear Kree’s reply, as all her concentration was suddenly occupied with preventing herself from gagging. It was the flavor of decay, dried decay, that coated her tongue with cloying dust. She sat very still and slowly exhaled through her nose. The odor of her own breath was like rotted, oozing redgrass.

  She saw Fletcher watching her with a wide, close-lipped smile of pure enjoyment. She forced herself to swallow. “You were waiting for that,” she accused him. Her teeth felt dry.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Kree and Bel exchanged puzzled glances.

  “What is it?” Rowan asked.

  He set to his own dinner with apparent pleasure. “You take redgrass stalks, and toast them over a fire. Then you grind them and roll the meat in it. I don’t think there’s any real food to it—people can’t digest redgrass, it just goes through the same. It’s done purely for the flavor.”

  Rowan looked at her dinner and grimaced. “I wonder why they bother?”

  “Variety,” he said. “It’s goat meat for breakfast, goat meat for lunch, and goat meat for dinner. You get your variety however you can.”

  After the meal, as the darkness began to gather, Fletcher and Kree took themselves to Mander’s tent, to check on the exhausted Averryl. Around the encampment, mertutials cleared away crockery, and people began to bed down for the night.

  A pair of children wove their way from their tent through the sitting and lying Outskirters, to arrive at Rowan’s side: Sithy, and a little boy so young as to still be unsteady on his feet. “Chess says,” Sithy began; she paused as if regretting her bravery, then continued, “Chess says give this to you.” It was the longest speech Rowan had ever heard her make.

  “What is it?” Rowan took the tattered object. It felt faintly greasy in her fingers, without leaving residue, rather like the gum soles of her own boots. She peered at it in the deepening twilight.

  “Chess says—” And Sithy paused so long that Rowan wondered if she forgot the question. “Says you like … things,” the girl finished. The little boy beside her watched both faces in turn, with wide blue eyes too fascinated to blink.

  “I do like things,” the steerswoman reassured them. “I like to find out about them. Do you know what it is?”

  “No …” The girl’s voice was barely audible.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Bodo found it.” Sithy gave her companion a shove, which sent him reeling. He recovered, and tottered back to her side.

  The object, colored a pale brown, was shaped like an empty sack, about the size of Bodo’s head. The inner surface was slick; the outer had a rough texture. Rowan took a closer look and tested the material with the edge of a fingernail. Particles came off, too small to see in the gloom. She rolled them between her fingers: sand, or something very like it.

  “Bodo,” Rowan said, “where did you find this?” The child looked at her with the same silent astonishment he might have afforded a talking dog.

  “In the grass …” Sithy supplied.

  “I found it in the grass!” Bodo suddenly announced, with perfect articulation and much volume. Either the memory or the act of declaration itself amused him beyond control. He emitted a series of gleeful squeals interspersed with precise ho-ho-hos.

  Rowan placed her left hand in the sack and attempted to restore it to its original shape: oval. “Bel,” she called.

  Bel excused herself from a discussion with Merryk and Jann and approached. “What?”

  “Is this a goblin egg?”

  Sithy’s jaw dropped at the concept, and she shook Bodo silent.

  Bel took the sack and immediately shook her head. “No. Goblin eggs are white. And thinner.” She attempted to examine it, but the light had diminished past usefulness. She handed it back to Rowan. “You’d better wait until morning to study it.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Rowan considered, then brought the object close to her face. A faint scent wafted out of its interior—musty, cloying, like the gland scent of some unidentifiable animal; but over this, a sharp tang she recognized immediately: the sea.

  She addressed the children. “Thank you. I do like things, and I’m very glad to have this.” She waited until the pair had departed, then said to Bel, “I think it’s a demon egg.”

  Bel thought for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s tell Kammeryn.”

  24

  Kammeryn sent warnings to the scouts, then informed the chiefs, who carefully instructed their war bands: Watch, listen, report any signs of demons instantly. But the night passed with no news.

  In the morning, Mander, the healer, searched Rowan out and found her reexamining the tattered object by daylight. The steerswoman gained no new information, other than confirmation of the object’s color.

  Mander spoke without preamble. “How do your hands feel?”

  Rowan looked up. “My hands?” She flexed the fingers and found them slightly stiff from dryness, which she had attributed to exposure to the cold wind the previous day.

  Mander took her left wrist and studied the hand with a proprietary air. “Bodo’s hands are itching, fingers and palms. I think it’s from that thing he found.”

  Recalling Bel’s description of a demon spraying corrosive fluid, Rowan became concerned. “How bad is he?” Her own palms began to itch—a purely emotional reaction.

  “Not bad.” The healer subjected Rowan’s right hand to the same scrutiny. “Have you washed them yet? Wash them again. I’ll give you some strong soap. Don’t let anyone use the same water after. If it gets worse, I have some salve. And you’d better throw that thing away.”

  Rowan followed Mander’s directions carefully, carrying a water sack to the cessfield and pouring the water over her hands instead of immersing them in the carrier; it would be used again, and she did not want any possible contamination to occur. She emptied the remaining water, slung the loose sack over her shoulder, and turned back to camp; but as she was crossing the border of dying grass at the edge of the cessfield, she stopped abruptly, then looked around.

  She had noticed at the old encampment that redgrass suffered from the presence of human waste: grass nearby bleached, then rotted, exactly as it had done in the place where, so many weeks earlier, Rowan and Bel had found the dead fox. Ghost-grass, it was called, and it had ringed the tribe’s cessfield in an area some eight feet wide.

  But here, after only one night of camping, the ring of decay was already three feet wide, affecting not only the redgrass, but tanglebrush, blackgrass, and a low, bulbous blue plant she had learned to call mosswort. Rowan attempted to imagine the extent of destruction that would be caused by a tribe remaining stationary for two weeks or more, as was usual in good pastures—and became disturbed.

  As she walked back to camp, she considered that it must be more efficient to dig a pit for waste and confine its ill effect, rather than set aside a flat area—and so wide a one, at that. The Outskirters could not have caused more destruction with their waste if they had actually planned to do so. And she immediately began to wonder if that was the case.

  A question to Chess provided the answer. “The land is our enemy,” the mertutial told her as she stowed the water carrier onto a nearly loaded train.

  “But you can’t mean to harm it!”

  “Why not?” Chess secured the straps on the load. “It means to harm us. It tries to kill us every day. We harm it back.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense.”

  Chess’s only reply was to deliver a sidelong look of derision. The steerswoman continued, “If you destroy the grass, how will you feed your herd?”

  “By moving on.”

  Rowan took further questions to Bel, who was occupied with organizing her own equipment and Rowan’s. Bel paused to consider, head tilted, then nodded. “It’s true. The land is
our enemy. Most things in the Outskirts are our enemies. We kill the goblins, we tear down the lichen-towers, we burn out tanglebrush.”

  “When you need to, or simply as a matter of course?”

  “As a matter of course.” She passed Rowan her pack. “We kill a goblin whether it’s attacked us or not. If we find their eggs, we destroy them. If we camp near lichen-towers, we’ll pull them down. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “But you’re also harming the redgrass; the goats need the redgrass!” Then Rowan stopped in realization. “And they destroy it, themselves,” she added, surprised. The goats grazed the reeds close to the roots; the stubs then died. She found another question. “How long does it take the redgrass to recover?”

  Bel shrugged into her pack. “Who can say? We never stay long enough to find out.”

  Nearby, Kree was counting heads. She came up short. “Where’s Fletcher?”

  “Went off to do his prayers,” someone replied, disgruntled, then pointed. “Coming back just now.”

  Rowan looked, and saw Fletcher approaching at a cheerful lope, clearly visible across the open landscape.

  Kree watched a moment, then made an indulgent gesture. “Well, if his god protects him, more power to it, and to him, too.”

  Another voice spoke, in a barely audible grumble. “Fletcher finds enough trouble to need a god all to himself.”

  Kree’s response was a single glance that rendered the speaker silent. “It’s true Fletcher finds trouble.” She pitched her voice for all her warriors to hear. “And I’m glad of it. Fletcher has a talent for finding trouble before it finds someone else, and for dealing with it. Whether it’s his prayers that protect him, or his wits, I don’t care. The result is the same. He’s one of the strengths of this band.”

  Fletcher had approached near enough to hear the comments. “And if you want an example of the usefulness of prayer,” he called out, “here’s one.”

  Rowan saw what he had. “Be careful how you handle it,” she called, and drew nearer. “It irritates the skin.”